Alec Penstone, a 100-year-old Royal Navy veteran who swept the seas for mines during the D-Day landings, has issued a blistering indictment of modern Britain, saying flatly that winning the Second World War “wasn’t worth the result.” Appearing on “Good Morning Britain,” Penstone’s voice carried the weight of a century — and the heartbreak of a man who watched his comrades die for a freedom he now believes has been squandered.
“My message is,” Penstone told the hosts, “I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones — all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives. For what? The country of today? No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.”
This was no casual complaint from a disillusioned pensioner. It was the lament of a man who, at fifteen, joined the war effort, later serving on the HMS Campania, searching for U-boats and mines under constant threat of torpedo fire. He called himself “one of the lucky ones” simply for surviving. Yet after returning home, marrying his sweetheart Gladys, and watching Britain rebuild, he now looks upon a nation that no longer resembles the country that once stood defiantly against tyranny.
“What we fought for was our freedom,” he said. “But now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.”
'What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,' says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) November 7, 2025
Penstone’s comments land in a Britain that appears almost determined to erase the very memory of the heroes who saved it. Earlier this year, under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, portraits of Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington — the men who defeated Adolf Hitler and Napoleon — were quietly removed from Parliament. GB News reported that the purge extended across Westminster, with Churchill’s image even taken down from Portcullis House, where he was once photographed standing at the Cenotaph in 1945.
The Cenotaph, that sacred monument to the fallen, now stands in stark contrast to a political class eager to distance itself from the nation’s own history. To Penstone’s generation, Churchill embodied courage, conviction, and the defense of liberty. To today’s ruling elite, he is an embarrassment — an inconvenient reminder of British greatness.
The moral decay goes deeper still. This year, Starmer dismissed calls to investigate the widespread rapes of young girls by Pakistani grooming gangs, smearing those who demanded justice as “jumping on a far-right bandwagon.” When Elon Musk called out the cover-up to his 210 million followers, Starmer called it “misinformation.” Musk shot back: “What an insane thing to say!” accusing Starmer of ignoring “vast numbers of little girls and their parents” for political gain.
For a man like Alec Penstone, who risked his life so that truth and freedom might endure, such cowardice and corruption cut deep. His sorrow is not nostalgia — it is recognition. The Britain he fought for has traded courage for cowardice, truth for propaganda, and honor for convenience.
The white stones still stand in silent rows. But the nation they represent, Penstone fears, has forgotten why they are there.
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